Antonio Tabucchi - The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

“I’ve got you,” replied Firmino, “you can count on me.”

They emerged into the afternoon light of Oporto. The streets were full of bustle and steamy heat, with a light mist blurring the outlines of the city. The lawyer wiped his brow with a handkerchief and made a brief gesture of farewell.

“I’ve eaten too much,” he grumbled, “I always eat too much. Incidentally, do you know how Hölderlin died?”

Firmino simply looked at him without answering. For the moment he really couldn’t recall how Hölderlin died.

“He died mad,” said the lawyer, “and that’s something to bear in mind.”

And supporting his enormous bulk he moved off with uncertain steps.

* “Would you send them away like useless shadows? These gelid ghosts were, heart pressed to heart, a part of yourself.”

LEONEL TORRES, TWENTY-SIX YEARS OFage, no criminal record, married with one child nine months old, born in Braga, resident in Oporto, a friend of Damasceno Monteiro. They were together on the night of the murder, he has already made a deposition to the examining magistrates. He has agreed to grant an exclusive interview to our paper. His statements open a new chapter in the story of this murky case and cast disquieting doubts on the conduct of our police. From your special correspondent in Oporto.

— How did you come to know Damasceno Monteiro?

I met him when my family moved to Oporto. I was twelve years old, at that time his parents lived in the Ribeira. But not in the same building as they do now, his father was a basketmaker and earned good money.

— We know that in recent months you were very close friends .

He was in trouble and often came to my house for a meal, he had very little money.

— But he’d found a job not long before .

He’d been taken on as errand-boy at the Stones of Portugal, an import-export firm in Gaia, most of his work was with the containers.

— And what had Senhor Monteiro found unusual, so to speak, about his work?

Well, inside the containers, along with electronic instruments, there were also packets of drugs, in plastic bags embedded in stearin.

— So you think that Damasceno Monteiro knew too much?

I don’t think it, I know it.

— Could you explain more fully?

Damasceno realized that the receiver was the night watchman, the old man who died a few days ago. Of course the firm knew nothing about this traffic, but the night watchman was in cahoots with these peddlers in Hong Kong, where the containers came from. He received the packets and unloaded them in Oporto.

— What kind of drugs were involved?

Heroin in its pure state.

— And where did it end up?

The Green Cricket came by and picked up the packages.

— Excuse me, but who is the Green Cricket?

He’s a sergeant in the local commissariat of the Guardia Nacional.

— And his name?

Titânio Silva, known as the Green Cricket.

— Why do they call him the Green Cricket?

Because when he gets angry he stammers and hops up and down like a cricket. Also he has an olive-green complexion.

— And what happened next?

A few months ago Damasceno worked as an electrician at the ‘Borboleta Nocturna,’ a nightclub belonging to the Green Cricket, though he’s got it registered under his sister-in-law’s name. That’s the base he uses to peddle all the drugs in Oporto. The big dealers come there to buy it and then they distribute it to the mules.

— The mules?

The retail-pushers, the guys who sell their asses unloading the stuff around the streets, to junkies.

— And what was it that Monteiro found out?

Nothing special, he’d simply realized that the Green Cricket was receiving consignments of heroin from Hong Kong through an import-export firm. Could be that he’d got on their track, who knows, for the fact is that soon afterwards he got a job as errand-boy at Stones of Portugal, in whose containers the stuff arrived from Asia, and he came to realize that the receiver was the night watchman.

— Who, it appears, has died of a stroke .

Yes, the old man had a sudden apoplectic fit and kicked the bucket. It was such a unique opportunity: the firm’s boss was abroad, the secretary on holiday and the accountant a cretin.

— So what happened?

So in the evening, soon after the night watchman had his stroke, Damasceno came to my house and told me that the astral conjunction had arrived, in fact, that it would be the coup of our lives, after which we could go off to Rio de Janeiro.

— How was that?

Because the containers loaded with stuff had just arrived from Hong Kong, as Damasceno Monteiro well knew, and since the Green Cricket and his gang would only be coming to pick them up the next day, as arranged with the night watchman, we would rip them off and take all the stuff.

— And how did you react to that?

I told him he must be mad, that if we screwed the Green Cricket like that he’d have us bumped off. And apart from that, where the hell would we have sold all that stuff?

— And what did Monteiro have to say to that?

He said that he’d see to the sales side, he knew a good base in Algarve where they could dispatch it to France and Spain, and that it was just millions for the taking.

— Go on .

Well, I told him I wouldn’t go with him that night, that I had a wife and baby and could get by on my pay at the garage, he told me that he was in the shit, that his father took Antabuse and was sick as a dog all night long, and that he, Damasceno, couldn’t stand that life any longer and wanted to go and live in Copacabana, and since I had a car and he didn’t I had to drive him there.

— And so you drove him?

Yes I drove him there, and to tell the truth I even went into the front yard with him, I did this of my own free will without him forcing me in any way, because I didn’t like the idea of hanging around outside the gates while he went off on that dangerous errand all alone.

— Excuse me, but put like that it sounds like a grand act of generosity on your part. Couldn’t it be that at the time you were thinking more of all the money you might get out of this robbery?

Maybe yes, I’ll be frank about it. I work all day long as an electrician and earn a pittance, my home is in a basement which my wife has tried to doll up with flower-patterned curtains, but in winter the walls ooze with damp, it’s an unhealthy place. And I’ve got a baby only a few months old.

— So how did your friend Monteiro make out?

He switched on the office lights as if he owned the place and told me to stay where I was, that he’d see to the rest of it. So I didn’t move and took no part in the robbery. He went through the drawers until he found the codes to open the containers and then went out into the yard. I sat at the desk, I was waiting for him and didn’t know what to do, so I thought I would make a free telephone call to Glasgow.

— Excuse me, but are you telling me you actually called Glasgow from the offices of the Stones of Portugal?

Yes, I’ve got a sister who emigrated to Glasgow and I hadn’t heard from her for five months. You know, to call Glasgow costs quite a bit, and my sister has a little mongoloid girl, which gives her a lot of problems.

— Please go on .

While I was on the phone I heard the noise of a car, so I hung up and nipped into the little storeroom with a folding door where the vacuum cleaner is kept. At that moment Damasceno came in from the back yard and the Green Cricket and his gang entered by the front door.